Whether you’re an overworked employee or an entrepreneur trapped in your own business, The 4-Hour Workweek is the compass for a new and revolutionary world.

Forget the old concept of retirement and the rest of the deferred-life plan—there is no need to wait and every reason not to. Whether your dream is escaping the rat race, high-end world travel, monthly five-figure income with zero management, or just living more and working less, this book is the blueprint.

You can have it all—really.

Join Tim Ferriss, popular guest lecturer in entrepreneurship at Princeton University, as he teaches you:

How to outsource your life and do whatever you want for a year, only to return to a bank account 50% larger than before you left

How blue-chip escape artists travel the world without quitting their jobs

How to eliminate 50% of your work in 48 hours using the principles of little-known European economists

How to train your boss to value performance over presence, or kill your job (or company) if it’s beyond repair

How to trade a long-haul career for short work bursts and frequent “mini-retirements”

What automated cash-flow “muses” are and how to create one in 2-4 weeks

How to cultivate selective ignorance—and create time—with a low-information diet

Management secrets of Remote Control CEOs

The crucial difference between absolute and relative income

How to get free housing worldwide and airfare at 50-80% off

How to fill the void and creating meaning after removing work and the office

The 4-Hour Workweek also includes the sample e-mails, voicemails, and real-life deals (with dollar figures and all) you will need to master the new world of luxury lifestyle design.

Who is Tim Ferriss?

Timothy Ferriss, nominated as one of Fast Company’s “Most Innovative Business People of 2007,” is author of the #1 New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and BusinessWeek bestseller, The 4-Hour Workweek, which has been sold into 33 languages.

He has been featured by more than 100 media outlets, including The New York Times, The Economist, TIME, Forbes, Fortune, CNN, and CBS. He speaks six languages, runs a multinational firm from wireless locations worldwide, and has been a popular guest lecturer at Princeton University since 2003, where he presents entrepreneurship as a tool for ideal lifestyle design and world change.

Still in his early thirties, Chris is on the verge of completing a tour of every country on earth — he’s already visited more than 175 nations — and yet he’s never held a “real job” or earned a regular paycheck. Rather, he has a special genius for turning ideas into income, and he uses what he earns both to support his life of adventure and to give back.

There are many others like Chris — those who’ve found ways to opt out of traditional employment and create the time and income to pursue what they find meaningful. Sometimes, achieving that perfect blend of passion and income doesn’t depend on shelving what you currently do. You can start small with your venture, committing little time or money, and wait to take the real plunge when you’re sure it’s successful.

In preparing to write this book, Chris identified 1,500 individuals who have built businesses earning $50,000 or more from a modest investment (in many cases, $100 or less), and from that group he’s chosen to focus on the 50 most intriguing case studies. In nearly all cases, people with no special skills discovered aspects of their personal passions that could be monetized, and were able to restructure their lives in ways that gave them greater freedom and fulfillment.

Here, finally, distilled into one easy-to-use-guide, are the most valuable lessons from those who’ve learned how to turn what they do into a gateway to self-fulfillment. It’s all about finding the intersection between your “expertise” — even if you don’t consider it such — and what other people will pay for.

You don’t need an MBA, a business plan or even employees. All you need is a product or service that springs from what you love to do anyway, people willing to pay, and a way to get paid

Not content to talk in generalities, Chris tells you exactly how many dollars his group of unexpected entrepreneurs required to get their projects up and running; what these individuals did in the first weeks and months to generate significant cash; some of the key mistakes they made along the way, and the crucial insights that made the business stick. Among Chris’s key principles: if you’re good at one thing, you’re probably good at something else; never teach a man to fish — sell him the fish instead; and in the battle between planning and action, action wins.

In ancient times, people who were dissatisfied with their lives dreamed of finding magic lamps, buried treasure, or streets paved with gold. Today, we know that it’s up to us to change our lives. And the best part is, if we change our own life, we can help others change theirs. This remarkable book will start you on your way.

Have you ever felt that trying to get your message out was hopeless? Like trying to get noticed in a packed stadium? Or trying to get heard at a crowded, loud party with music blaring in the background?

You’re not alone.

GREAT IDEAS ARE NO LONGER ENOUGH

As the former CEO and current Chairman of Thomas Nelson Publishers, one of the largest publishers in the world, I’ve met hundreds of hugely talented people with outstanding ideas. Unfortunately, most of them couldn’t get published. Why? They didn’t have a “platform.”

But it’s not just authors. In the last ten years, it’s been increasingly difficult for anyoneto get the attention they need to succeed in such a noisy world. This includes:

Public Speakers

Bloggers

Recording Artists

Politicians

Business Owners

Entrepreneurs

Sales People

Pastors

Brand Managers

Without a platform—something that enables you to get seen and heard—you don’t have a chance. Having an awesome product, an outstanding service, or a compelling cause is no longer enough.

THIS IS TRUE NOW MORE THAN EVER

There are two reasons why:

The market is more crowded than ever. Face it. Competition has never been greater. There are more people competing for the one thing that is finite: other people’s attention. And you’re in competition with everyone else who wants a slice of it.

People are more distracted than ever. Products are just the beginning. We have more movies. More television channels. More apps, radio stations, and podcasts. More news sites, blogs, and, of course, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, not to mention even newer social media services.

It feels overwhelming, right? All these people. All this noise. And you … ALONE in a crowd without a microphone.

I’ve known Michael Hyatt for more than a decade, and during that time I’ve seen him master just about every social media platform that’s hit the scene. He’s used blogging, Facebook, Twitter and more to expand his personal platform from a successful book publisher to a leading national brand of his own. Trust me, this guy knows what he’s talking about—so pay attention!”

– DAVE RAMSEYNew York Times Best‐selling Author
The Dave Ramsey Show

YOU NEED A PLATFORM TO BE HEARD

In the old days, you could stand on a small hill or a wooden stage to be heard. That was your platform.

In the 20th century it got a little more complicated. You had to have a radio or television show, a newspaper or magazine column, a best-selling book, or perhaps celebrity status.

But suddenly, almost overnight, everything changed. With the advent of social media EVERYONE NOW HAS ACCESS to a virtual microphone and everyone is connected to everyone else.

As a result, today’s platforms are built of:

Contacts

Customers

Prospects

Followers

Fans

In other words, a platform is your tribe. People who share your passion and want to hear from like-minded people.

If only you had a platform to reach them. Well, now you can…

A PLATFORM PROVIDES THREE BENEFITS

A platform enables you to cut through the noise and deliver your message or product right to the HEART of your best PROSPECTS.

A platform provides three benefits:

A platform provides visibility. The word platform itself is a metaphor for a stage on which you are elevated above the crowd. It makes it possible for everyone in the audience to see you. This is especially important in the noisy world I’ve described.

A platform provides amplification. It enables you to be heard above the roar of the crowd. The noise. Modern sound systems leverage natural acoustics and make it possible to speak before tens of thousands of people. Today, modern media—especially social media—provide an opportunity for you to extend your reach even further.

A platform provides connection. Traditional media platforms make possible a kind of one-way conversation. You “know” the talk show host, the performing artist, or the conference speaker. But social media has taken this to a whole new level. It makes possible two-way conversation—in other words, engagement.

I have watched Michael Hyatt build his own platform from the ground up to become one of the largest in the world. And he has done so with the strategies and tips he outlines in this very practical book. Any author, speaker, or small business owner who wants a blueprint for getting the attention and visibility they want, needs to read this book.”

– JOHN C. MAXWELLNew York Times Best‐selling Author
Leadership Expert

IF I CAN BUILD A PLATFORM, YOU CAN TOO!

But here’s what no one else is telling you about building a platform like the one I’m describing…

It’s really not as complicated as it sounds.

Sure, there’s a lot of work involved, but if you’re serious about yourself or your product, you already knew that. But Platform is exactly what the subtitle says: a step-by-step guide.

Listen, in the past eight years, I’ve experienced every setback, mistake, and headache you can imagine while building my own platform. But I’ve also managed to generate:

300,000+ unique monthly visitors

123,000+ Twitter followers

92,000+ monthly podcast listeners

70,000+ newsletter subscribers

17,000+ Facebook fans

The point of those numbers is not to brag. The point is to illustrate that I know what works (and what you should avoid). I carefully documented everything I learned in building my platform—successes AND failures.

Platform consists of five sections and sixty, short chapters full of practical steps, real-world examples, and helpful resources. It is not armchair theory. It is not idle speculation. It is full of “news you can use” to help you build your own platform.

A young woman walks into a laboratory. Over the past two years, she has transformed almost every aspect of her life. She has quit smoking, run a marathon, and been promoted at work. The patterns inside her brain, neurologists discover, have fundamentally changed.

Marketers at Procter & Gamble study videos of people making their beds. They are desperately trying to figure out how to sell a new product called Febreze, on track to be one of the biggest flops in company history. Suddenly, one of them detects a nearly imperceptible pattern—and with a slight shift in advertising, Febreze goes on to earn a billion dollars a year.

An untested CEO takes over one of the largest companies in America. His first order of business is attacking a single pattern among his employees—how they approach worker safety—and soon the firm, Alcoa, becomes the top performer in the Dow Jones.

What do all these people have in common? They achieved success by focusing on the patterns that shape every aspect of our lives.

They succeeded by transforming habits.

In The Power of Habit, award-winning New York Times business reporter Charles Duhigg takes us to the thrilling edge of scientific discoveries that explain why habits exist and how they can be changed. With penetrating intelligence and an ability to distill vast amounts of information into engrossing narratives, Duhigg brings to life a whole new understanding of human nature and its potential for transformation.

Along the way we learn why some people and companies struggle to change, despite years of trying, while others seem to remake themselves overnight. We visit laboratories where neuroscientists explore how habits work and where, exactly, they reside in our brains. We discover how the right habits were crucial to the success of Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, and civil-rights hero Martin Luther King, Jr. We go inside Procter & Gamble, Target superstores, Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church, NFL locker rooms, and the nation’s largest hospitals and see how implementing so-called keystone habits can earn billions and mean the difference between failure and success, life and death.

At its core, The Power of Habit contains an exhilarating argument: The key to exercising regularly, losing weight, raising exceptional children, becoming more productive, building revolutionary companies and social movements, and achieving success is understanding how habits work.

Habits aren’t destiny. As Charles Duhigg shows, by harnessing this new science, we can transform our businesses, our communities, and our lives.